Groceries, considered basic necessities, could be exempt from a sales tax to ease the burden on lower income families.AP Photo

Say sales tax. Did your blood pressure rise?

In Oregon, typically it does. This is the state whose citizens have rejected a sales tax nine times and whose politicians twist in their seats at the utterance of the words.

There's something about being Oregonian that rejects something so regressive as a sales tax, which if traditionally applied costs the most among people earning the least. Why should an out-of-work Springfield sawyer pay the same tax on toothpaste as a six-figure Portland lawyer? With income tax, Oregon's mainstay, the more you make the more you pay -- at least in theory.

But bloated public retirement plans drain public resources while constricted general revenue, keyed to the income tax, leaves services and infrastructure short. Teachers are laid off as our bridges go unrepaired and homelessness rises. The pervasive sense is our financial plight just can't continue, no matter what the hammered economy has done. Just don't mention sales tax.

We will.

Oregon is one of five states without a sales tax and ranks a pale 44th among states for how much it charges per person for selected taxes on things such as gasoline, cigarettes, liquor and real estate franchises. Meanwhile, income tax revenue is blunted by unemployment and fails to reach most projections -- this despite the fact that Oregonians carry one of the highest income tax burdens in the nation yet drag along with a below-national-average per capita income.

No sales tax alone could ever get us out of the hole. That's true even though former state Sen. Frank Morse, R-Corvallis, and the late state Treasurer Ben Westlund a few years ago bravely calculated that an Oregon sales tax, without adding financial burden to most Oregonians, could capture up to $1 billion annually from untapped tourists and an underground Oregon economy trading in off-the-books transactions.

But neither is any other single instrument of taxation, including our income tax, the solution. The moving pieces of fair taxation are interdependent, and only when one is made synchronous with the other can any attempt at fairness as well as stable revenue be achieved. This will be key going forward, as our political and business leaders grapple with comprehensive reform.

Few instruments are as open to adjustment as a sales tax, which is useful. To offset the force of a sales tax upon low wage-earners, exemptions on such things as groceries and everyday necessities can offer relief. Conversely, luxury items associated with the wealthy -- expensive cars and yachts, for example -- can be singled out for a sales tax known as an excise tax.

But complicating the scenario are core shifts in the economy. Most sales and excise taxes, which accounted for nearly half of all tax revenue in states in 2010, were adopted decades ago in a national economy roaring from the manufacture and sale of goods. Now, overtaking the things we buy are the services we purchase: from haircuts to gym memberships to cable TV subscriptions to auto repairs and medical checkups. Services represent huge revenue potential for a sales tax, but try telling that to the neighborhood mechanic who operates on a thin margin and a handshake.

Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, jokes that if you were to take away the income tax, the property tax and the federal tax and offered every Oregonian a pony but asked for a sales tax, the answer would be no. Sadly, she's probably right. Instructively, however, Virginia nearly a decade ago approved a modest increase in the state's once-contested sales tax following a sustained public education campaign.

That's not to say we're stuck in a rut. But if Oregonians are serious about stabilizing revenue, and we must, then the discussion goes beyond reducing capital gains taxes to include an earnest look at a many-faceted sales tax on goods and services. It will likely take from now until the Legislature's 2014 session, when reform proposals will land, to find the sweet spot that assures stable revenue and fairness to taxpayers.

And it may turn out that squaring the books and restoring government services does more for high blood pressure than tarring a tax that might be made to morph with the changing times.